This document summarizes key elements of poetry such as sound devices, rhyme, metaphor, and simile. It provides examples and definitions of literary devices used in poetry including alliteration, symbolism, rhyme, rhythm, meter, metaphor, simile, and free verse. Students are asked to write examples applying some of these concepts.

1. • Poetry is organized into lines and stanzas instead
of sentences and paragraphs. In poetry, how
words sound is often as important as what they
mean. Sometimes the sounds of words support
their meanings.

2. • Poetry can help you see everyday things-and life in
general-in a different way. It can inspire you when
you are in a rut. It can help you smile when you’re
sad and work through hard times when the going
gets tough. It can also help you sharpen your
thinking skills. Like riddles, poems contain clues to
meanings that you can understand by thinking in
fresh, creative ways.

4. Alliteration
• Poetry was originally a way for important stories and
lessons to be passed from person to person. Poetic
techniques like alliteration were used to make poems
easier to remember. Poets and audiences realized
that the sounds of poems were also beautiful, like
music in words...
• Repeated sounds...usually consonants
• “Soft is the strain when Zepher gently blows,
• and the smooth stream in smoother numbers
flows...”

5. Edgar Allan Poe
The Raven

6. Key Literary Elements-Sound Devices
• Alliteration: the repetition of consonant sounds at
the beginning of words
• 1. Write a sentence using alliteration.
• Once upon a midnight dreary while I pondered weak and
weary
• ...rare and radiant maiden
• And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
• Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering,
fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to
dream before
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. A peck of pickled
peppers Peter Piper picked. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled
peppers How many pickled peppers did Peter Piper pick?

7. • Symbol: A person, object, image, word, or event that evokes a
range of additional meaning beyond and usually more abstract than
its literal significance. Symbols are educational devices for evoking
complex ideas without having to resort to painstaking explanations
that would make a story more like an essay than an experience.
Conventional symbols have meanings that are widely recognized
by a society or culture. Some conventional symbols are the
Christian cross, the Star of David, a swastika, or a nation’s flag.
Writers use conventional symbols to reinforce meanings. Kate
Chopin, for example, emphasizes the spring setting in “The Story of
an Hour” as a way of suggesting the renewed sense of life that Mrs.
Mallard feels when she thinks herself free from her husband. A
literary or contextual symbol can be a setting, character, action,
object, name, or anything else in a work that maintains its literal
significance while suggesting other meanings. Such symbols go
beyond conventional symbols; they gain their symbolic meaning
within the context of a specific story.

8. Rhyme
The rhymes that you are most familiar with are those
that repeat the vowel and consonant sounds (like loon
& moon, or happy & sappy) at the end of the line. In
most poetry the rhyming words appear at the ends of
the lines... Hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up
the clock
But there are other kinds of rhymes. One is called
slant or near rhyme. In a slant rhyme, the vowel
sounds are repeated or the consonant sounds, but not
both.
feet & seen...might & sight...ball & fill...tick and tock

9. Key Literary Elements-rhyme,
rhythm, and meter
• Rhyme: the repetition of sounds, usually at
the end of lines
• 2. Write two sentences that rhyme

10. Metaphor & Simile
• Metaphor: “That test was a piece of cake” You know
the test was not actually a piece of cake. You are
directly comparing very different things that are similar
in some important way. Eating a piece of cake is easy,
so you are saying the test was not difficult.
• Simile: If you say, “Taking that test was as easy as eating
a piece of cake,” or “Taking that test was like eating a
piece of cake,” then you would be using an indirect
comparison using like or as.

11. Key Literary Elements
• Figurative Language-metaphor and simile
• A simile makes a comparison, usually using 'like' or
'as'. A metaphor directly describes something in a
way that it isn't in a literal sense. Tranquility
• Metaphor:Brian was a wall, bouncing every tennis Time slides
ball back over the net. a gentle ocean
• We would have had more pizza to eat if Tammy waves upon
waves,
hadn’t been such a hog.
•
washing the
Cindy was such a mule. We couldn’t get her to
shore,
change her mind.
loving the
• 3. Write an example of a metaphor. shore.

12. Key Literary Elements
• Figurative Language-simile
• A simile makes a comparison, Dusk is…
usually using 'like' or 'as'. A
Colored like a
metaphor directly describes
something in a way that it isn't in a rainbow
literal sense. Silent like a
• Simile: eyes black as coal, life is like still forest
a box of chocolates, love is like a Brings dark,
thorn on a rose, happy as a clam, like a large
busy as a bee, tough like nails
cloud.
• 4. Write an example of a simile

13. • Type of poetry that is based on the rhythms
of spoken language rather than on traditional
patterns of rhythm.
Free Verse
Seeing the plates piled high
(you tube example)
with turkey, sweet potatoes,
mashed potatoes, 5. Write a short free verse
cranberry relish, green beans,
cornbread and more,
I’m full
before I’ve had
a single bite